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A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South
When Pontius Pilate asked our Lord, "What is truth?" Christ did not answer, because He
knew Pilate did not wish to know the truth. When His disciples asked Him, "What is truth?" He
replied, "I am the Truth."
Now there are many people, who like Pilate, ask for truth, but really do not wish it and
will not receive it. Unless truth is sought and given in the spirit of the Christ, it is not truth.
False history accepted as truth destroys civilization. For over one hundred and thirty years
the civilization of the South has been almost destroyed by the falsehoods written about it, and
now when one has in hand the authenticated facts to prove these falsehoods to be false, many of
our own Southern people as well as the press largely responsible for them are unfair and say, "It
will do no good to bring these facts to light, for you will only stir up strife." Why not stir up
strife, rather than allow these falsehoods to forever remain in history? Shall fear of attacks from
those responsible for them silence us? Have we lost our courage?
The truth is all we ask, and when proven that what we have said is not true, then we will
retreat.
Prejudice has no part in history. I am not prejudiced against Abraham Lincoln, but if the
falsehoods concerning him are balking the righting of Southern history, shall I, as a Southern
historian, remain silent lest I offend one of his adorers?
The South is no longer willing to stand the misrepresentations and omissions of history,
and a fair-minded North should not blame the South, and should be ready to hear her side of the
story, provided it is given from authenticated facts.
Confederate States General Robert Edward Lee said:
Every one should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity.
History is not the relation of campaigns, and battles, and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles.
General Lee showed that he was far more concerned that the Southern cause should be
vindicated than that he should be glorified or any act of his or others be magnified.
Benjamin H. Hill felt great concern about this question. He said, "We owe it to our dead, to our living, and to our children to preserve the truth and repel the falsehoods, so that we may secure just judgment from the only tribunal before which we may appear and be fully and fairly heard, and that tribunal is the bar of history." Had the South followed this advice we would not today, after one hundred and thirty
years have passed, be obliged to correct these falsehoods of history. These falsehoods are
circulated not only in our own country, but now widely circulated in foreign countries as well.
The South has been very patient, but can afford to be patient no longer -- she must
demand that the truth be told, and the truth is all she asks. She desires that the truth be told in
such a way that peace between the sections shall be the result. Peace cannot come until the truth
is known and acknowledged by both North and South.
The cry is, "Let Abraham Lincoln alone. He is entrenched in the minds and hearts of the
people of both sections -- you cannot make a change now." The change must be made. The time
has fully come when the South especially should know the truth about Abraham Lincoln.
If all that has been said of him by his biographers, since Lamon and Herndon wrote, be
true, then the South is not worth defending. The Confederate monuments had best be taken
down and the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy had best
disband, for Lincoln's glorifiers teach that the Cause for which Jefferson Davis and his followers
stood was unworthy and should have been defeated.
Our conquerors teach that the Constitution stood for a National Government and not for a
Compact between sovereign states.
They teach that the advocates of secession were "traitors to the United States
government," and should have been hanged when the war ended.
They teach that the war was a "Civil War," because we were not a Republic of sovereign
states, but a Nation.
They teach that the South fought to hold their slaves, and that the slaveholders were
barbarous and cruel.
They teach that Abraham Lincoln cut the shackles of slavery by his Emancipation
Proclamation and set the slaves free.
They teach that had it not been for Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation the
slaves would never have been freed.
They teach that the Confederate government was formed to destroy the Union, and but
for Lincoln's "wise policies," the Union would never have been preserved.
They teach that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was the worst blow that could have
befallen the South, for his policies would have prevented the horrors of Reconstruction.
They teach that Abraham Lincoln was a friend to the South and a friend to the Negro.
Are these things true? No, all are falsehoods!
Abraham Lincoln is represented in history and in literature as "The Preserver of the
Union." If this be true then we must acknowledge that the South fought to destroy the Union. For
this falsehood of history we will never stand.
What political party stood for destroying the United States Constitution which created
the Union? Lincoln's.
What political party continued to violate the Constitution after war was declared?
Lincoln's.
What political party said, "Let us burn the Constitution; it is a compact with death and a
league with hell"? Lincoln's.
What political party desired a dissolution of the Union and urged war to enforce it?
Lincoln's.
What political party was guilty of ten distinct violations of the Constitution? Lincoln's.
What political party committed no violation of the Constitution? Davis'.
What political party urged and implored that the Union be preserved by the Constitution
so that war might be averted? Davis'.
Neither President Lincoln nor his party preserved the Union by the Constitution. A Union
pinned together by bayonets was the result at Appomattox, and a torn and tattered Constitution is
our inheritance from Lincoln's administration. Happiness will never be ours until a party is put
in power that will see that the Constitution of our forefathers is protected as a sacred instrument,
and the decisions of the Supreme Court are considered the highest law of the land. Then and
then only will the Union be preserved in its integrity.
Had the South won in 1865, no amendments to the Constitution would have been
necessary. However, the North won. How many amendments became absolutely necessary
because of its victory?
What political party stood for destroying the United States Constitution which created the Union? Lincoln's. What political party continued to violate the Constitution after war was declared? Lincoln's. What political party said, "Let us burn the Constitution; it is a compact with death and a league with hell"? Lincoln's. What political party desired a dissolution of the Union and urged war to enforce it? Lincoln's. What political party was guilty of ten distinct violations of the Constitution? Lincoln's.
Hate to be rude, but I really don't know facts behind these answers. Could you please, justify each answer for me?
Hate to be rude, but I really don't know facts behind these answers. Could you please, justify each answer for me?
Nope. You're going to have to read and find out. I don't want to give away the ending.
Oh Boy....
I predict that this thread will introduce Whiskey Papa to the 'newbies'.
Actually Nawthenaw's today say Lincoln was a sell out too, because he didn't go far enough. Northern tyrant, upholder of the scared natural rights behind the founding (as Harry Jaffa says) or capitalist stoogie who used abolishion as a tool to facilitate nothern capitalist imperialism.
Like that TV show "To Tell the Truth used to say, "will the real Lincoln please stand up?"
I predict that this thread will introduce Whiskey Papa to the 'newbies'.
Well see.
Great screen name. How's the lunch room these days?
"Let us burn the Constitution; it is a compact with death and a league with hell"? Lincoln's
Actually, no. If I'm not mistaken, this was the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. During Lincoln's lifetime Garrison was as critical of old Abe any Southerner. Similar with some of the other claims in the article. There were accusations of Davis violating the Confederate Constitution, for example. And can one really charge Lincoln with wanting to "destroy the Constitution which created the Union" more than the secessionists? They may not have been guilty of such a desire, but I find it hard to believe that Lincoln was more guilty, when they would not even accept the results of an election.
I hope all this Lincoln bashing is a seasonal thing. It's starting to get to be overkill and creating sympathy for the old boy.
How's the lunch room these days?
Food fine...conversation better.
It is unfortunate that some tiny minority of Americans refuse to recognize the greatness of Abraham Lincoln, but by virtue of their small and ever shrinking number it makes very little difference what they believe. Their error, as everyone knows, can be traced to the Civil War, or, as they dramatically like to call it, the War Between the States, about which someone once wisely said, "Never have so many fought so valiantly for so low a cause."
The Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their final generation.
I predict that this thread will introduce Whiskey Papa to the 'newbies'
Hope you are right, Eddie - I got a weekend with not much to do.
Couldn't agree with you more about the lack of foundation in Lincoln-bashing; even Jefferson Davis publicly recognized that Lincoln's assassination was one of the worst things to happen to the South. Abe would never have allowed the extreme policies (and extreme failures) of Reconstruction and he was already being targeted for this by the Radicals at the time of his death. At the same time; he knew there was but one solution to slavery, its abolition, and until the extreme Southern radicals (the opposite face of the coin of the Northern Radicals in their destructiveness) pushed secession and the war, he was willing to pay compensation to the slave owners for emancipation. Lincoln was far-seeing, compassionate, forgiving and one of the two greatest leaders this nation was fortunate to have (Washington the first).
Link is not working.
Link is not working.
Here's a link to the contents page.
I still can't figure out where that went wrong in the original post.
...this thread will introduce Whiskey Papa to the 'newbies'
LOL, you got that right!
When I start scrolling down through the posts and I see a really long cut-n-paste . . . I know Whiskey Papa's name will be at the end of it. {;o)
FYI
he was willing to pay compensation to the slave owners for emancipation.
That's a new one on me.
Can you cite references?
Don't wait too long. These threads are the echo's of the old Dixiecrat mythologies. Dixiecrats used to run around preaching against Lincoln and waving the flag. In the 60's when blacks moved into public education in the south, the Dixiecrats moved out and eventually settled into the Republican Right. True Rino's, everyone. The dying gasps of the Dixiecrats fought to put the Confederate flag up on Southern Statehouses, now the Rinocrats fight to keep it their.
The North didn't fight a Civil War, but Southerners did. The North fought the King Cotton bananna Republic that fooled a lot of good men from the South into dying for nothing.
Our conquerors teach that the Constitution stood for a National Government and not for a Compact between sovereign states.
They teach that the war was a "Civil War," because we were not a Republic of sovereign states, but a Nation.
==================================
It was a civil war, about exactly the above reasons. The states insisted that their state constitutions & laws were sovereign, that they trumped the federal constitution. Not so:
- 'Article IV, section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.'
After the war was fought, over essentially this point, the 14th amendment was passed to elaborate on that point and to say: 'nor shall any state deprive any person of life,liberty, or property, without due possess ------
And here we are, still 'discussing' it. - The war is over. The constitution won. Now we have to get the FEDS to follow it.
The Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their final generation.
I'd like to agree with you, but I wonder. Lincoln's great heyday seems to have passed with the age of the nation-state. What we are seeing may be more a revival or even something new, rather than a survival. It's based on the fact that the "one nation indivisible" looks threatened by multiculturalism, globalism and culture wars, and some are ready to abandon it. Anti-Lincoln sentiment on the right is paralleled by anti-Jefferson sentiment on the left. The left's abandonment of liberty is paralleled by a rejection of nationalism or nationality by some on the right. We take Lincoln as an example of 20th Century statism or socialism, because the 19th Century nationalism, which he favored has become even more a thing of the past than 20th century socialism or statism.
I hope this is all a passing phase, and perhaps Bush in the White House may change things, but LewRockwell.com may be a harbinger of things to come.
While I very much admire some of Lincoln's qualities, I don't think many people today would fight if half the country wanted to leave. This may be a good thing, as it means a more peaceful world.
How many would be willing to take up arms against a tyrant, though? Moving away from Lincoln's world also means moving away from Washington's and Jefferson's in some important ways. Lincoln is not simply the opposite of the founders, he has many traits in common with them. It is not always just Lincoln against the founders, in some significant ways it may be Lincoln and the Founders against our generation.
Lincoln has to be understood in the context of his time, when people would fight over the idea of a nation and nationhood meant more than it does today.
Whiskey Papa
C'mon eddie, don't say those words too loud! :-)
The Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their final generation.
I certainly hope you are wrong. Any real study of Lincoln is a study in just what can go wrong in this country when a self serving megalomaniac is in the White House. It almost happened again with Clinton. And I believe that more people are learning the truth about Lincoln, instead of dying out, as you incorrectly claim.
Yes, a valiant war for a lousy cause. I'm so sick of hearing that the war was about states' rights. Without slavery, there would have been no war. PERIOD.
These threads are the echo's of the old Dixiecrat mythologies.
That Lincoln suspended habeus corpus is not a dixiecrat myth. That he imprisoned thousands of people who disagreed with him is not a myth. That he had people deported is also not a Dixiecrat myth. Neither is the fact that he shut down newspapers who did not print what he wanted. He raped the Constitution in the name of saving the "Union" -- which did not exist without the Constitution that Lincoln himself tossed out the window.
Without slavery, there would have been no war.
Buy one of these books..."When In the Course of Human Events" and/or "The South Was Right" IF you want to know the truth. If your statement is made based on your government school education, I suggest you read one or both of the books above.
I agree with your #19. I am also of the mind that Lincoln did exactly what James Madison would have done.
bump-o-matic
The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is, that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.
--James Madison
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world. Woe to the ambition that would meditate the destruction of either!
--James Madison
I am among those who are most anxious for the preservation of the Union of the States, and for the success of the Constitutional experiment of which it is the basis. We owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to watch, to cherish, and as far as possible, to perfect a new modification of the powers of Government, which aims at the better security against external danger and internal disorder, a better provision for national strength and individual rights, than had been exemplified under any previous form.
--James Madison
I wish also, in revising the constitution, we may throw into that section, which interdicts the abuse of certain powers in the state legislatures, some other provisions of equal if not greater importance than those already made. The words, "No state shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, &c." were wise and proper restrictions in the constitution. I think there is more danger of those powers being abused by the state governments than by the government of the United States.
--James Madison
American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.
--James Madison
African Slavery In America - Thomas Paine
| African Slavery In America | |
(Editor's Note: Although Paine was not the first, as some have said,
to advocate the aboliton of slavery in Amerca, he was certainly one of the
earliest and most influential. The essay was written in 1774 and published
March 8, 1775 when it appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly
Advertiser. Just a few weeks later on April 14, 1775 the first anti-slavery
society in America was formed in Philadelphia. Paine was a founding member).
To Americans:
That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men
by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But
that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned
in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has
been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every
principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession
of eminent men, and several late publications.
Our Traders in MEN (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness
of the SLAVE-TRADE, if they
attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts: and such as shun
and stiffle all these, wilfully sacrifice Conscience, and the character
of integrity to that golden idol.
The Managers the Trade themselves, and others testify, that many of these
African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy
plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched
them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these
inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting
Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one
tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked
and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand
yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment
in the first year; besides all that are slain in the
unnatural ways excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the managers
and supporters of this inhuman trade to answer for to the common Lord of
all!
Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.
They show as little reason as conscience who put the matter by with saying - "Men, in some cases, are lawfully made slaves, and why may not these?" So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding- "They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it." Such man may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.
Most shocking of all is alledging the sacred scriptures to favour this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and the conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. Baxter declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, "the practice was permitted to the Jews." To which may be replied,
1. The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us; they had not only orders to cut off several nations altogether, but if they were obliged to war with others, and conquered them, to cut off every male; they were suffered to use polygamy and divorces, and other things utterly unlawful to us under clearer light.
2. The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them.
3. Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came,
under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations and privileges of one above
others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours;
and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would
be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked
with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours,
and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with the
Divine precepts! Is this doing to them as we would desire they should
do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would
we think it just? - One would almost wish they could for once; it might
convince more than reason, or the Bible.
As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples
of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they
took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no
way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive
people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage
against humanity and justice, that seems left by heathen nations to be practised
by pretended Christian. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse
it!
As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.
So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted
from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice;
as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each
other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for
adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the
guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.
If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.
Certainly, one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness and barbarity, as for this practice. They are not more contrary to the natural dictates of conscience, and feeling of humanity; nay, they are all comprehended in it.
But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.
1. With what consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretence of authority, or claim upon them?
2. How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicity; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?
3. Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce it, with grief and abhorrence? Should not every society bear testimony against it, and account obstinate persisters in it bad men, enemies to their country, and exclude them from fellowship; as they often do for much lesser faults?
4. The great Question may be - What should be done with those who are
enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and
cruelty; they who enjoyed the labours of the their better days should keep,
and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance
of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and
and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent,
some, employing them in their labour still, might give them some reasonable
allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their
labours at the own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may
live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative
affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like
fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements
on the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare,
and assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are,
should any enemy promise them a better condition.
5. The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence
of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman
savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued
in oppositions of the redeemer's cause, and the happiness of men. Are we
not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these
injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measure to instruct,
not only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive
Christians, laboured always to spread the divine religion; and this
is equally our duty while there is an heathen nation: But what singular
obligations are we under to these injured people!
These are the sentiments of
JUSTICE AND HUMANITY.
The constitution won.
Not hardly.
It's harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative -- given the former category's increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter's prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment -- but it's still easy to tell a liberal from a libertarian.
Just ask about either Amendment.
If what you get back is a spirited defense of the ideas of this country's Founding Fathers, what you've got is a libertarian. By shameful default, libertarians have become America's last and only reliable stewards of the Bill of Rights.
But if -- and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most people -- you'd like to know whether an individual is a libertarian or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.
Suppose a woman -- with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated -- desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because he'd already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time she'd complained about his stealing.
Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasn't a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?
History tells us that Lincoln was a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force -- "sell to us at our price or pay a fine that'll put you out of business" -- for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. That's what a tariff's all about. In support of this "noble principle", when southerners demonstrated what amounted to no more than token resistance, Lincoln permitted an internal war to begin that butchered more Americans than all of this country's foreign wars -- before or afterward -- rolled into one.
Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent -- indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims -- and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. For the same purposes, Lincoln declared, rather late in the war, that black slaves were now free in the south -- where he had no effective jurisdiction -- while declaring at the same time, somewhat more quietly but for the record nonetheless, that if maintaining slavery could have won his war for him, he'd have done that, instead.
The fact is, Lincoln didn't abolish slavery at all, he nationalized it, imposing income taxation and military conscription upon what had been a free country before he took over -- income taxation and military conscription to which newly "freed" blacks soon found themselves subjected right alongside newly-enslaved whites. If the civil war was truly fought against slavery -- a dubious, "politically correct" assertion with no historical evidence to back it up -- then clearly, slavery won.
Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight "knock on the door", illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, "disappearing" thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. To finance his crimes against humanity, Lincoln allowed the printing of worthless paper money in unprecedented volumes, ultimately plunging America into a long, grim depression -- in the south, it lasted half a century -- he didn't have to live through, himself.
In the end, Lincoln didn't unite this country -- that can't be done by force -- he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, he'd have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.
If libertarians ran things, they'd melt all the Lincoln pennies, shred all the Lincoln fives, take a wrecking ball to the Lincoln Memorial, and consider erecting monuments to John Wilkes Booth. Libertarians know Lincoln as the worst President America has ever had to suffer, with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson running a distant second, third, and fourth. [This essay was written before the appearence of the Clintons. -- ed]
Conservatives, on the other hand, adore Lincoln, publicly admire his methods, and revere him as the best President America ever had. One wonders: is this because they'd like to do, all over again, all of the things Lincoln did to the American people? Judging from their taste for executions as a substitute for individual self-defense, their penchant for putting people behind bars -- more than any other country in the world, per capita, no matter how poorly it works to reduce crime -- and the bitter distaste they display for Constitutional "technicalities" like the exclusionary rule, which are all that keep America from becoming the world's largest banana republic, one is well-justified in wondering.
The troubling truth is that, more than anybody else's, Abraham Lincoln's career resembles and foreshadows that of V.I. Lenin, who, with somewhat better technology at his disposal, slaughtered millions of innocents -- rather than mere hundreds of thousands -- to enforce an impossibly stupid idea which, in the end, like forced association, was proven by history to be a resounding failure. Abraham Lincoln was America's Lenin, and when America has finally absorbed that painful but illuminating truth, it will finally have begun to recover from the War between the States.
L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of "The Probability Broach", "The Mitzvah" (with Aaron Zelman) and many other books.
Permission to redistribute this article is herewith granted by the author -- provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and appropriate credit given. This article is on the Web at http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/abelenin.html
Any real study of Lincoln is a study in just what can go wrong in this country when a self serving megalomaniac is in the White House. It almost happened again with Clinton. And I believe that more people are learning the truth about Lincoln...
Anyone who believes Lincoln was a "self-serving megalomaniac" obviously doesn't know the first thing about the man's life and personality or the first thing about the Civil War period, or the first thing about American history and Lincoln's place in it.
Anyone who would then go on to compare Lincoln to Clinton demonstrates a severe inability to judge men and character as well.
I hate to clue you folks in, but you are living in a dream world. Lincoln's place in history is rock-solid secure. Arguments put forward like the very poorly written one at the top of this thread only strengthen his position, because it is so plain that such arguments are put forward by the lunatic fringe.
And I believe that more people are learning the truth about Lincoln, instead of dying out, as you incorrectly claim.
You are correct.
My schooling began in Georgia in 1958 and in all that time, I heard nary a word against Lincoln.
(Sherman yes...Lincoln no)
As we have watched our history being rewritten, in our own lifetimes,....
And seen manipulation by "historians" and media...
And watched how aggression is oftened masked in a "higher, humanitarian" patois so that rights can be cavalierly dismissed...
We are re-examing our history.
Mr. Lincoln is being re-examined.
And he no longer seems quite so noble.
Anyone hear Bob Newhart's "Abe Lincoln's Press Agent" routine?
Smith's piece would be laughable if it weren't so full of lies, and a bit scary to boot. Post that column in enough places on the Internet as an official statement of the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party would quickly be reduced to a membership of a few hundred misfits.
Thanks for the reply. I hope you packed your nomex undies, you're gonna need 'em.
I consider myself a constituional libertarian. An old style conservative. I like some of L. Niel's stuff, but he's dead wrong about Abe. He was a politician, a man of his day, no saint, & he made a lot of mistakes. But he preserved the republic, & the constitution.
Niels empty rhetoric doesn't change that, and neither does present day federal abuse of our system.
I consider myself a constituional libertarian. An old style conservative. I like some of L. Niel's stuff, but he's dead wrong about Abe. He was a politician, a man of his day, no saint, & he made a lot of mistakes. But he preserved the republic, & the constitution.
Niels empty rhetoric doesn't change that, and neither does present day federal abuse of our system.
You make several thought provoking observations. I see it as Lincoln and the Founders against our generation, if I were to adopt you analogy. But I'm not sure the analogy fits very well, because I'm not sure nationalism is as buried as you apparenly believe.
I'm also inclined to disagree that secession would be placidly accepted if attempted today. Such an event is so far outside the realm of possibility (even the Hawaiians, who have a strong case, can't get a viable secessionist movement going), that it is very difficult from the present perspective to gauge how people would react if it became a real possibility. But my strong gut feeling is that a secessionist movement would create a wild uproar.
On your point about tyrants, the American people have shown a troubling capacity to be badly fooled by a man of low character during the Clinton years. No other American President has shown the traits of a tyrant as plainly as he. And so my confidence is shaken a bit on that score. One must hope that if faced with a clear Constitutional crisis the American people would respond appropriately.
The 19th century issues and dilemmas that Lincoln faced must be taken in context, as you say, but at the same time it is helpful to use his core principles as a touchstone when considering the globalist movement that is even now upon us.
Slave owners should have been dragged out into the streets, castrated and then shot. The arrogance of someone believing they can own another human...
Slave owners should have been dragged out into the streets, castrated and then shot. The arrogance of someone believing they can own another human...
Bear in mind that the Secret Service monitors this site and based upon your statement you just described all of the elected officials who represent us in the federal government. That should give you pause to concern.
No. I described the disgusting immorality of slave owners....
That Lincoln suspended habeus corpus is not a dixiecrat myth.
The idea that he had no reason to is utter foolishness. Those thought to be spies were imprisoned and kept there because of it. In the south, folks like that were simply hanged. What virtue and moral superiority lies there? In the North, Congress approved of Lincolns actions by a wide majority. In the South, when it's Congress did the same thing, Mississippi, Missouri and Georgia all refused to accept the actions of the confederate Congress.
That he imprisoned thousands of people who disagreed with him is not a myth.
Like I said, hanging.
That he had people deported is also not a Dixiecrat myth.
Yes, but he also let any confederate soldiers who were willing to enlist in the US Army do so, and many did. In the South, any man who served in the Northern Armies and was later drafted again in the south was hung.
Neither is the fact that he shut down newspapers who did not print what he wanted.
Nothing like in the South. In the South anyone could be brought before government commisions to have all of their personal affairs and business relationships examined, and anytime it so desired, the Confederate Government could seize any property it so fit to.
He raped the Constitution in the name of saving the "Union" -- which did not exist without the Constitution that Lincoln himself tossed out the window.
Lincoln did nothing without Congressional approval, except when Congress was out of session, and then he had to go through the process of getting their approval, which he always did. It's all in the public record. Davis and the Confederacy, operated in private. It was the South that got sodomized. Perhaps you just didn't notice with your skirts hoisted over your head. Perhaps you were sitting so long your butt got numb.
The real problem with our current government started with the Dixiecrat Wilson who rode into the White House waving the Confederate Battle Rag, pushing segregation and implementing all of the nasty little things Davis designed for the Confederacy into the Republic by sliding it in under the guise of socialism.
No. I described the disgusting immorality of slave owners....
Reminds me of a documentary I saw where a Central American woman was interviewed and when she was asked about the ongoing "troubles" she said, "When someone kicks in your front door and demands you feed and shelter them, I call them 'landlord.'"
What's the difference between that and what we call a civilized society where more than one half of the country is supported by the other, less than half, by confiscating the fruits of their labor by the "force" of the law.
Hard to argue with the powers that be when they have the force, wouldn't you say?
Sounds like slavery to me. And who fosters and promotes that agenda?
It's getting late, but this historian is right on target. Certainly of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, it has been said that where he had the {unconstitutional} power to act, he freed no slaves -- meaning the 4 border states with slaves. Where he had no {effective} power to act, he freed all the slaves -- meaning none in practicality. It was Amendment 13 that ended slavery. No president had the power to free a slave.
It was Amendment 13 that ended slavery. No president had the power to free a slave.
Lincoln's influence was critical to the passage of the 13th Amendment in Congress.
Slave owners should have been dragged out into the streets, castrated and then shot. The arrogance of someone believing they can own another human...
Then maybe you should learn where slavery in the Americas came from.
It is a documented fact that the first blacks, only twenty in all, came as indentured slaves to work for English colonists at Jamestown. Indentured servants worked for five to seven years, and then were given their freedom. Among them was a black man named Anthony Johnson. After working off his indenture, he was not only a free man, but a landowner with a prosperous plantation. This in itself was an historical step forward in black history.He became even more famous as the first black man in the colonies to effect a landmark decision in a court of law. Johnson, established in a Virginia court in 1654 a radical new concept in the laws relating to master and slave - "lifetime indenture." The claimant was John Casor , a black servant indentured to Johnson. Johnson successfully asserted that he had a claim to the service of Casor for the remainder of Casor's life, and Johnson became America's first slave holder and the Father of American Slavery. Indenture flourished among blacks as well as whites. The 1830 National Census counted 3,775 black slave owners who between them owned 12,760 slaves. Instauration by Wilmot Robertson, Sept. 1997
Since the Confederate flag never flew abouve a slave ship, I suggest you shoot the decendents of the Yankee slavers first.
Lincoln can speak for himself:
To James N. Brown
October 18, 1858
I do not perceive how I can express myself, more plainly, than I have done
in the foregoing extracts. In four of them I have expressly disclaimed all
intention to bring about social and political equality between the white and
black races, and, in all the rest, I have done the same thing by clear
implication.
I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in the word
"men" used in the Declaration of Independence.
I believe the declara[tion] that "all men are created equal" is the great
fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that negro
slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of
government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that
by our frame of government, the States which have slavery are to retain it,
or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others -- individuals,
free-states and national government -- are constitutionally bound to leave
them alone about it.
I believe our government was thus framed because of the necessity springing
from the actual presence of slavery, when it was framed.
That such necessity does not exist in the teritories[sic], where slavery is
not present.
...It does not follow that social and political equality between whites and
blacks, must be incorporated, because slavery must not."
"I have not forgotten--probably never shall forget--the very impressive
occasion when yourself and friends visited me on a Sabbath forenoon two
years ago. Nor has your kind letter, written nearly a year later, ever been
forgotten. In all, it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance on
God. I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for
their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to
yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though
we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped
for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows
best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our
own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He
gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He
ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion,
which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay."
Abraham Lincoln
Letter to Eliza Gurney, September 4, 1864.
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have
been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in
numbers, wealth and power as no nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten
God. Intoxicated with unbroken successes, we have become too self-sufficient
to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray
to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before
the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency
and forgiveness."
--A. Lincoln
March 30, 1863
"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a
struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government,
whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial
weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all --
to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.
Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the
leading object of the government for whose existance we contend."
A. Lincoln 7/4/61
"It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference whether the present movement at the south be called "secession" or "rebellion." The movers, however, well understand the difference. At the beginning, they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude, by any name that implies violation of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and order, as much pride in, and reverence for, the history, and government, of their common country, as any other civilized and patriotic people. They knew they could make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments. Accordingly they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented a sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is to thin to merit any notice...
What is now combatted, is the position that secession consistent with the Constitution -- is lawful, and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law, which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these states were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave, and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums, (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of the so-called seceding states, in common with the rest. Is it just, either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining States pay for the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, pay no part of it herself?
Again, if one state may secede, so may another; and then when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed there money? If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms terms upon which they will promise to remain...
If all the states, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the seceding of the others from that one," it would exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do, what the others because they are a majority may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle, and profound, on the rights of minorities. They are not so partial to that power, which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself "We the People."
7/4/61
"And this issue embraces more than the fact of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--can or cannot, maintain its territorial integtrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, accrding to organic law, in any case, can always, upn the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, wikthout any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: "Is there in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?"
A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
And n race:
"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
8/24/54
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.? --
You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
1854
"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
August, 1858
"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--But I do expect it will cease to be divided.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is the course of ultimate extinctioon; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South.
Have we no tendency towards the latter condition?"
1858
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent
to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."
3/1/59
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite
likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that
subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that
you do not. Yet I have neither adopted nor proposed any measure, which is
not consistant even with your view, provided you are for the Union. I
suggested compensated emancipation; to which you replied you wished not to
be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way, as to save you from greater expense, to save the Union exclusively by other means. You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional--I think differently. I think the Constitution invests the commander in chief with the law of war, in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there--has there ever been--any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies
and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever
taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy?
....but the proclamation, as law,
either is valid, or it is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life....The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us, since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us some of most important successes, believe the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt the rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers....I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections, often urged, that emancipation, and arming the blacks, are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted, as such, in good faith. You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you then, exclusively to save the Union... negroes, like other people act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives
for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a
just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I
can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never
understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to
act upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took, that I would,
to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath.
Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the
oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil
administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary
abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically
declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I
have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and
feeling on slavery. I did understand however that my oath to preserve the
constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of
preserving by every indispensible means, that government--that nation--of
which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the
nation, and preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be
protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is
never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensible to to the
preservation of the of the Constitution, through the preservation of the
nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it...
When in
March, and May and July 1862 I made earnest, and succcessive appeals to the
border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the
indispensable neccessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks
would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition;
and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either
surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong
hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped
for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More
than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none
in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss any
how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and
thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are palpable facts,
about which there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not
have them without the measure.
And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by
writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of
arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty
thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but
for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is
only because he can not face the truth.
I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale
I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled
events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end
of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or
any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending
seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also
that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our
complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to
attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."
4/4/64
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
April 11, 1865
Also consider:
"After the interview was over, Douglass left the White House with a growing respect for Lincoln. He was "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely," Douglass said later, "who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color." --"With Malice Towards None, p. 357 by Stephen Oates.
"Lincoln had Douglass shown in at once. "Here is my friend Douglass," the President announced when Douglass entered the room. "I am glad to see you," Lincoln told him. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my address." He added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know hat you think of it." Douglass said he was impressed: he thought it "a sacred effort." "I am glad you liked it." Lincoln said, and he watched as Douglass passed down the [receiving] line. It was the first inaugural reception in the history of the Republic in which an American President had greeted a free black man and solicited his opinion."
Ibid., p. 412
Other sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984
and:
"Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989
Walt
Yes, a valiant war for a lousy cause. I'm so sick of hearing that the war was about states' rights. Without slavery, there would have been no war. PERIOD.
WRONG! PERIOD. It was about MONEY!
Worship Lincoln if you wish, along with his thieves Grant and Sherman. You must have a special file established to Refute all and sundry statements against Lincoln for nothin new has been added since the last two or three times you posted this garbage.
The South is so darned lucky it lost the Civil War. Otherwise it would be 97% black today, very much like South Africa. The North saved you, you bastards. You lost the war but won the future.
You must have a special file established to Refute all and sundry
statements against Lincoln for nothin new has been added since the last
two or three times you posted this garbage.
Lincoln's side should be told too, don't you agree? Why would you fear that?
Here's something I found recently, beginning with an excerpt of the South Carolina ordinance of secession:
"We the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 23rd day of May, in the year of our lord, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of the State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States, is hereby dissolved."
"Conscious that this document bore upon its face the plain contradiction of their pretended authority, and its own palpable nullity both in techincal form and essential principle, the convention undertook to give it strength and plausibility by an elaborate Declaration of Causes, adopted a few days later (December 24th)-- a sort of half-parody of Jefferson's masterpiece. It could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air. The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. The notable point in the Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy. On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground, In rejecting the rememdy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--serisly as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief." This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition."
"With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some f the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution. "The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only aganist right, but that it was without cause."
--John G. Nicolay, 1881
Walt
Worship Lincoln if you wish, along with his thieves Grant and Sherman.
Here's another interesting piece of text:
"...in the wake of the assasination, editors, generals and public officials across the South voiced the opinion that the region had lost its best friend. Indignation meetings, so-called, were convened in many places. Lincoln stood for peace, mercy, and forgiveness. His loss, therefore, was a calamity for the defeated states. This opinion was sometimes ascribed to Jefferson Davis, even though he stood accused of complicity in the assasination....He [Davis] read the telegram [bringing news of Lincoln's death] and when it brought an exultant shout raised his hand to check the demonstration..."He had power over the Northern people," Davis wrote in his memoir of the war," and was without malignity to the southern people."...Alone of the southern apologists, [Alexander] Stephens held Lincoln in high regard. "The Union with him in sentiment," said the Georgian, "rose to the sublimnity of religious mysticism...in 1873 "Little Elick" Stephens, who again represented his Georgia district in Congress, praised Lincoln for his wisdom, kindness and generosity in a well-publicized speech seconding the acceptance of the gift of Francis B. Carpenter's famous painting of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."...[in 1880] a young law student at the University of Virginia, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, speaking for the southern generation that grew to maturity after the war, declared, "I yield to no one precedence in love of the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy"...the leading propenent of that creed was Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. In 1886 Grady, thirty-six years old, was invited to address the New England Society of New York, on the 266th anniversary to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. General Sherman, seated on the platform, was an honored guest, and the band played [I am not making this up] "Marching Through Georgia" before Grady was Introduced. Pronouncing the death of the Old South, he lauded the New South of Union and freedom and progress. And he offered Lincoln as the vibrant symbol not alone of reconciliation but of American character. "Lincoln," he said, "comprehended within himself all the strength, and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of the republic." He was indeed, the first American, "the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, in whose ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in whose great soul the faults of both were lost."
--From "Lincoln in American Memory" by Merrill D. Peterson P. 46-48
Walt
"Smith's piece would be laughable if it weren't so full of lies, and a bit scary to boot. Post that column in enough places on the Internet as an official statement of the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party would quickly be reduced to a membership of a few hundred misfits."
Like several others here and elsewhere, you condemn a viewpoint as a pack of lies but offer no specificity. So- what lies? Do you have evidence to back up your claims? What is your evidence and where can it be found? Please don't include sources widely accepted by the public schools.
I too was brought up to revere Mr. Lincoln's memory, but I remember the sharp difference in the tone of statements regarding the Japanese before, during and after the Second World War. I harbor no illusions about whether or not similar tactics were employed to tell us about Mr. Lincoln after his death.
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim,
declare, and make known to all persons who have, directly or by
implication, participated in the existing rebellion, except as
hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them and
each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, except as to
slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall have
intervened, and upon the condition that every such person shall take and
subscribe an oath, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath
inviolate; and which oath shall be registered for permanent
preservation, and shall be of the tenor and effect following, to wit:
"I, --------, do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I
will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder; and that I
will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all acts of
Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves,
so long and so far as not repealed, modified or held void by Congress,
or by decision of the Supreme Court; and that I will, in like manner,
abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made
during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so
far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court.
So help me God."
The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are
all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents
of the so-called confederate government; all who have left judicial
stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are, or
shall have been, military or naval officers of said so-called
confederate government above the rank of colonel in the army, or of
lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States Congress
to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the army or navy
of the United States, and afterwards aided the rebellion; and all who
have engaged in any way in treating colored persons or white persons, in
charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which
persons may have been found in the United States service, as soldiers,
seamen, or in any other capacity.
And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known, that whenever, in
any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee,
Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number
of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such
State at the Presidential election of the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty, each having taken the oath aforesaid and not
having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election
law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of
secession, and excluding all others, shall re-establish a State
government which shall be republican, and in no wise contravening said
oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and
the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional
provision which declares that "The United States shall guaranty to every
State in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect
each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature,
or the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against
domestic violence."
And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that any provision
which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed
people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent
freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent,
as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring,
landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national
Executive. And it is suggested as not improper, that, in constructing a
loyal State government in any State, the name of the State, the
boundary, the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of
laws, as before the rebellion, be maintained, subject only to the
modifications made necessary by the conditions hereinbefore stated, and
such others, if any, not contravening said conditions, and which may be
deemed expedient by those framing the new State government.
To avoid misunderstanding, it may be proper to say that this
proclamation, so far as it relates to State governments, has no
reference to States wherein loyal State governments have all the while
been maintained. And for the same reason, it may be proper to further
say that whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be
admitted to seats, constitutionally rests exclusively with the
respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive. And still
further, that this proclamation is intended to present the people of the
States wherein the national authority has been suspended, and loyal
State governments have been subverted, a mode in and by which the
national authority and loyal State governments may be re-established
within said States, or in any of them; and, while the mode presented is
the best the Executive can suggest with his present impressions, it must
not be understood that no other possible mode would be acceptable.
Given under my hand at the city, of Washington, the 8th. day of
December, A.D. one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the
independence of the United States of America the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State
Walt
Freedom in America was granted by God that we would have the freedom to do good. Freedom abused is freedom lost. Even the Vatican donated a million dollars to the Soth in hopes of eliminating the freedom of religion in America.
fix
Hi! Glad to see you are still around. I hadn't seen any of your posts in a long time, and I was concerned.
Your posts always are informative. Good ones again today. My favorite is the one where you posted the state constitutions of the confederate states and highlighted their comments on keeping or being allowed to keep their slaves. This certainly refuted all those ignorant posts that tried to say that the Civil War was not about slavery.
Very glad to once again see you refute ridiculous claims.
I don't need to post any documentation to prove that Lincoln is in no way comparable to Lenin. Anybody who believes I do is not worth bothering with.
Whiskey Papa has never posted except as an apologist for the despotic actions of Lincoln.
i'm SURE it will!
The South is so darned lucky it lost the Civil War. Otherwise it would be 97% black today, very much like "South Africa". The North saved you, you bastards. You lost the war but "won the future".
And you call yourself "antinazi"???
Whiskey Papa has never posted except as an apologist for the despotic actions of Lincoln.
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high
office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are
hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the
common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot
endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must
rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
And here is what Texans thought of the Republican party:
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the
recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and
avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a
negro slave remains in these States."
--Texas Declaration of Secession.
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . . Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . .
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it.
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Senator Hunter of VA. During
the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the
SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes
him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had
gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise
he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the
slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was
regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the
ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had
insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and
upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would
assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated
ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting
that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now
what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government
to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall
be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central
Government
to emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the
old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to
emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an
abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it
had been undertaken."
> "We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have
> been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them
> by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as
> sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment
> among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and
> to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have
> encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and
> those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to
> servile insurrection. (from South Carolina Decl. of Secession)
The issue was slavery.
Walt
NOT true-the real facts about lincoln the racist, anti-roman catholic, anti-semite, etc. continue to come out despite damnyankee lies, evasions and puffery!
LOL!
and you base your opinion on what actual FACTS? (please don't offer self-serving, damnyankee lies as if they were facts!)
free dixie NOW, sw
Smith's piece would be laughable if it weren't so full of lies, and a bit scary to boot.
Come now beckett, please advise which are the lies? You may choose to put a different spin on the suspension of constitutional liberties in the North and the distruction of Southern cities and towns, but credible historians of both sides know that they happened.
Lust of power and money were the root cause of the war. For those who disagree, please provide the documentation that the stategic objective of the war was the freeing of slaves? (In case you don't know what "stategic objective" means, re-read FDR's address to congress on December 8, 1941.)
Before someone flames me for being pro-slavery, let me hasten to say that it was right that slavery was done away with, but let's not kid ourselves. As repugnant as slavery was, it was still legal under federal law. A modern day example would be states that did not practice abortion invading states that did practice abortion in order to stamp out abortions all while the supreme law of the land allowed abortions.
Refute that argument if you can.
well said!
lincoln's place in history is NOT secure, unless you mean that liars routinely LIE!
By using the term "damnyankee" you prove my point. Only those hopelessly stuck in the past, and still using epithets from more than 100 years ago, give any credence to these childish rants against one of the top three Presidents in American history. Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their last generation.
comments like that identify the writer as one of the "non-thinking, semi-literate fools who soak up every lie propounded by the elites, endlessly repeating, un-critically, those lies"
"a tale full of sound & fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing" MAY also apply.
walt, why do you waste bandwidth, posting long, boring, needless drivel. can't you come up with your OWN arguments?
more needless drivel.
damnyankee is one word to all true southrons. we are stuck in a bad marriage with the northern states. the only intelligent way out of such a union is no-fault DIVORCE!
"The North fought the King Cotton bananna Republic.."
...and today we live in true Banana republic. Got it you dummy?
I don't need to post any documentation to prove that Lincoln is in no way comparable to Lenin. Anybody who believes I do is not worth bothering with
Well let's look at the arguments shall we?
It is not needed, not fitting here, that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connexions, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention.
It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above labor, in the structure of government.
It is assumed that labor is available only in connexion with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it, induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what we call slaves. And further it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fixed in that condition for life.
Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital, producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.
A few men own capital, and with that avoid labor themselves, and, with their capital, hire or buy another few to labor for them.
A large majority belong to neither class -- neither work for others, nor have others working for them. In most of the southern states, a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters; while in the northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families -- wives, sons and daughters -- work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other--Abraham Lincoln Speech given to Congress Dec 3,1861
Fourth Plank: CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF ALL EMIGRANTS AND REBELS--Communist Manifesto
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed -- a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.---Communist Manifesto
We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it--Communist Manifesto
Oh most definitely Lincoln and Lenin? I agree!! Now Lincoln and Marx that's a different story. They were both D*MNED Socialists, fact of the matter
BTW, the rise of the SOUTHRON PARTY in every southron state is proof that the lust for southron freedom is on the rise again. every day that passes, more southrons cleave to the cross of st. andrew. we are sick unto death of damnyankee lies, hatefilled & hateful comments about our culture, mores, laws, religions, institutions, sacred CSA flags, museums, relics, mores and separate identity as southrons, endlessly repeated by the extremist, imperialist,socialist, baby-murdering, immoral or amoral, secular-humanist,mean-spirited, meddling.leftist damnyankee elites from the northeast, the mainslime media and fringe groups like the naaLcp.
there is just ONE peaceful solution to our bad marriage: POLITICAL FREEDOM from the north.
if you, like so many others dislike and fear us as a part of the USA and consider us somehow 2d-class as people, join the movement favoring dixie liberty. we "ignorant,stupid, scheming, incestous crackers, lolling around in trailer parks" (so described by the boston globe recently) will get along fine as a independent and liberty-loving nation, thanks very much! we would have the world's 6th largest economy, plenty of universities, public institutions,etc. to do quite well as a neutralist, non-interventionist but watchfully-wellarmed,nation.(the SR of which i both dream & write would be much like the Swiss Republic!)
there is plenty of room in the northern hemishere for 6 countries: Azatlan,Canada,Mexico,Quebec, Southron Republic & the USA. perhaps, if we southrons were free, in time, we could even be friends!
free dixie NOW, sw
well said!
The day will come when Lincoln is re-evaluated completely: history will place him next to LBJ, Clinton, Wilson and some others, although the damage he has done is far deadlier than the damage done by all bad presidents combined.
bump
and today we live in true Banana republic.
That's certainly true in Florida, and probably also true in the other states that love that sesh rag. Bananna Republicanism moved into the Union with Woodrow Wilson, arrogant son of the South and avid student of Jefferson Davis. It survives and festers today in the Republican Party.
As noted, Neil Smith does seem more likely to turn readers off libertarianism than attract them to it. Was Lincoln more corrupt than the average politician of his day? Certainly, he doesn't seem to have "sold himself" to wealthy and powerful interests to the same degree that Stephen Douglas did. Was he more in their pockets than any politician today is? And how can he be both a prostitute of the corporations and an anti-capitalist Lenin?
Libertarians have never given the Hamilton-Clay-Lincoln line their due and admitted that they were very important in creating modern capitalist America. Personally, I prefer the agrarian Jeffersonian school, but really, left to themselves the Jeffersonians would never have created capitalist America. Libertarians malign some of their true forebears when they attack Lincoln and other intellectual decendants of Hamilton.
Lincoln has to be understood in the context of his time, when people would fight over the idea of a nation and nationhood meant more than it does today.
They might if the exit was fueled by a desire to maintain and protect the institution of slavery. If the South had no slaves, and decided to exit due to the issue of tariffs, as some here have argued was the causa belli, I wonder if the North would have gone to war to stop it. I doubt it.
Post #76 proves beyond doubt to any rational person that you are delusional. You really should submit yourself for study by a research institution. The attitudes you possess are vanishing so rapidly that science needs to document the mindset for forensic purposes, lest future generations refuse to believe that such ignorance ever existed.
If the South had no slaves, and decided to exit due to the issue of tariffs, as some here have argued was the causa belli, I wonder if the North would have gone to war to stop it. I doubt it.
The North would have lost a major source of revenue; of course they would have gone to war to stop it. What would possibly make you think otherwise?
Lincoln's comments about labor are perfectly rational and defensible. They have nothing to do with socialism, as any fair reading of the document you posted clearly shows.
I can't prove it of course. But I doubt my Yankee farmer great grandfather in Indiana would have volunteered to wear the blue uniform, as he did, over a taxation issue.
Smith's piece would be laughable if it weren't so full of lies, and a bit scary to boot. Post that column in enough places on the Internet as an official statement of the Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party would quickly be reduced to a membership of a few hundred misfits.
I and about 500k-1million libertarians disagree with you. If it is so full of falsehoods, point them out.
See Post #58 above.
I can't prove it of course. But I doubt my Yankee farmer great grandfather in Indiana would have volunteered to wear the blue uniform, as he did, over a taxation issue.
Of course he wouldn't. He was told it was to preserve the Union. Later, as the prime motivator of maintaining belligerancy shifted to freeing the slaves, there were major repurcussions all through the North. The New York draft riots were probably the most notorious of these backlashes. The average white guy up North couldn't care less if Southerners owned slaves, he was fighting for duty, honor and country.
The average white guy up North couldn't care less if Southerners owned slaves
I guess my great granddad was not average then. He cared, and cared a lot.
I didn't say there weren't had-core abolitionists in the Yankee ranks, simply that these were very much in the minority.
The average Southern soldier wasn't fighting to preserve slavery, he was fighting to protect hearth and home. We didn't call it the War of Northern Aggression for nothing. For example, Robert E. Lee did not throw in with the Confederacy until the invasion of Virginia by federal troops. Lee was anti-slavery, having freed his families bondsmen well before the war. He simply fought to protect his home state of Virginia from the ravages of the Yankee hordes.
ammon: Is there anything untrue or racist in my reply. I don't think so. Just the facts.
"That Lincoln suspended habeus corpus is not a dixiecrat myth.
What seems to be overlooked by all the dixiecrats is that suspension of habeas corpus is allowed by the Constitution. From Article I, Sections 9, habeas corpus "shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion public safety may require it".
That he imprisoned thousands of people who disagreed with him is not a myth.
For just disagreeing? Perhaps you would care to elaborate a bit? Certainly arrests did occur in areas under martial law, such as border states, and areas that resisted the implementation of the draft. But it can be reasonably argued that a little more was going on than just "disagreement". And of course, Jefferson Davis, that beloved icon of States Rights and Constitutional Law, declared martial law on numerous occasions under similar circumstances, such as Richmond VA in 1862.
That he had people deported is also not a Dixiecrat myth.
Clement Valladingham was certainly exiled for treason, instead of being imprisoned or executed. And it certainly didn't stop him from running for Govener of Ohio from Canada.
He raped the Constitution in the name of saving the "Union" -- which did not exist without the Constitution that Lincoln himself tossed out the window."
This makes no sense at all. Lincoln took measures consistent with the Constitution and appropriate under wartime conditions. Certainly reasonable people can disagree (now and then) about individual actions, or the definition of "...when public safety may require it", but to say "He raped the Constitution" is inflammatory hyperbole.
Lincoln never stood for the social or political equality of the Negro. In his speech at Charleston, Illinois in 1858, he said:
I am not now, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.
"isn't that special?"
your post, in as much as you know NOTHING about me outside that singuliar posting, means either:
1. you are a rabid south-hater, or
2.have a crystal ball/are a "seer", or
3.a know-nothing,who has swallowed the damnyankee wartime propaganda whole (now dressed-up as revisionism)without any serious scholarship/educated knowledge, or
4.some combination of the previous 3.
this post to me wins you the PINK LOLLIPOP AWARD for the Week, which i infrequently award for: exceptional "ignorance,self-rightousness, childishness,stupidity,hatefullness and/or intolerence to other viewpoints" shown while posting DRIVEL/WASTING BANDWIDTH on FR.
for dixie freedom, sw
but he might well have been "sold a bill of goods" that the "saving of the Union" was worth DYING for!
and you KNOW this?
please post your "proof" if you have any-inquiiring minds are waiting.
lincoln and klintoon are essentially twins, marooned 140 years apart. both were/are liars, racists, bigots, hypocrytes,power-hungry,willing to break the law anytime to get ahead personally,willing to set aside the Constitution on a whim(for the good of all, of course),anti-semites & most of all- sure of their "legacy".
both, sadly, are "well-regarded by academia & the public". hopefully, both will eventually given a couple of 100 years be FORGOTTEN.
for dixie, sw
The North would have lost a major source of revenue; of course they would have gone to war to stop it.
What are you talking about? The only Tariffs on cotton were English Tariffs, and as for the Tariffs the Fed collected from the traditionally dirt poor south, they never covered the bill for the forts and the lighthouses.
I haven't had time to read this entire thread, so I hope I don't repeat anyone. I heard on WGN Chicago radio this morning, that next week Mon. - Wed. there will be a PBS Special titled. " A HOUSE DIVIDED" the story of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.
It will be two hours each night, and it sounds very interesting. I learned from the interview many things I did not know about both of them.
Did you know that Mary Todd in her day was much like Hillary is today? And that after the assasination, Mary roamed all over Europe, and could not go back to Springfield?..When she did she was ignored.
This is not a mini series, but a documentation of their life together all the way to Mary Todd's death. I am fascinated by History, and this sounds very worthwile veiwing or taping.The author worked 6 years on this, compiling many pictures and history to put together, so it sounds like a good work to me. Just thought I would let you know if you were interested.
What are you talking about? The only Tariffs on cotton were English Tariffs, and as for the Tariffs the Fed collected from the traditionally dirt poor south, they never covered the bill for the forts and the lighthouses.
There were huge tariffs on imports into the U.S. The South did most of its trade with England and France (Southern cotton in exchange for European manufactured goods). The Europeans offered more for Southern cotton than Northern mills did; in an effort to force the South to trade with the North, the U.S. imposed extremely high tariffs on manufactured goods from Europe. This is what we are talking about. As for the South being dirt poor, I'm not sure from whence you get that idea. The South was agrarian, but far from poor.
There were huge tariffs on imports into the U.S. The South did most of its trade with England and France (Southern cotton in exchange for European manufactured goods).
Southern Cotton exchanged for money. True, the wealthy planters imported goods, but most Southern whites were actually poorer than most servitors.
The Europeans offered more for Southern cotton than Northern mills did; in an effort to force the South to trade with the North, the U.S. imposed extremely high tariffs on manufactured goods from Europe.
The Europeans offered more for cotton so they could get it. The Tariffs, in England and in the US, were to run the government. Southerners were well aware of that because it was their idea in the first place. The first Tariff bill was introduced by John C. Calhoun. The Tariff of Abominations was introduced and voted for by the South. Southerners, particularly the wealthy ones, did not want to force the Feds into selling western land to Northern Europeans. The Tariff of Abominations was introduced by Southerners in an attempt to get Northerners to veto it so that a lower tariff would be introduced. That way the South would get the tariff and blame the North for cutting the Tariff, but the Northern manufacturers were desperate to keep their workers from going west so they voted for it, much to the chagrin of the southern idiots.
This is what we are talking about. As for the South being dirt poor, I'm not sure from whence you get that idea. The South was agrarian, but far from poor.
That's plain fact. Books were written about it before the war, but they were banned in the South for obvious reasons. It was not until the coming of steam powered industry that the South got up above hard scrabble farming, but even then the wages in the South were utter crap compared to the North. After the Civil War, largely because of poverty, the illiteracy rate among whites in the South was 50%. That's why the view of history most Southerners hold is so distorted. Most of them couldn't read to save their rednecks. Good folk, not dumb, just poor as churchmice.
Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their last generation.
If by "Lincoln bashers" you mean anyone who doesn't ascribe to the idea that Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents, then I think you're wrong. I don't think Lincoln was the devil, but I do disagree with many of his actions, and I think it would have been better had he let the South secede peacefully. His actions resulted in a huge increase in federal power, and made it pretty much inconceivable for secession to ever happen again. However, I realize that the South was not perfect, either, and I am definately against slavery. But I don't have to be a Southerner to see that Lincoln had his faults.
But I doubt my Yankee farmer great grandfather in Indiana would have volunteered to wear the blue uniform, as he did, over a taxation issue.
I stated in post #66 "A modern day example would be states that did not practice abortion invading states that did practice abortion in order to stamp out abortions all while the supreme law of the land allowed abortions."
Call the slave owners the pro-abortion people of their day. Call the abolitionists the pro-life people of their day. Call The Fugative Slave Laws and Dred Scott the Roe v.Wade of that day. John Brown becomes Eric Rudolph. Hmmm...when you look at the cause of the war in that light it puts things in a different light doesn't it?
The involuntary servitude of 3-4 million people would hardly cause the North to invade the South no more than the blood of 35-40 million unborn has caused a civil war today.
If the death and destruction during the War between the States was for the sin of slavery, the death and destruction for the sin of abortion will make that war look like a Sunday School picnic.
That's what his daughter, my grandmother, told me. My grandmother was a very smart lady, and I found her to be quite accurate in other matters. So I assume she was accurate on this matter.
I'm sorry, but I just can't get off on your analogy. A practical issue is that with slavery, you see the manifestation every day, but not with dead fetuses. But if one region of the country considered by a large majority abortion absolute murder, and another region thought otherwise, perhaps your analogy would gain some traction.
A practical issue is that with slavery, you see the manifestation every day, but not with dead fetuses. But if one region of the country considered by a large majority abortion absolute murder, and another region thought otherwise, perhaps your analogy would gain some traction.
Traction? You make my point, Torie. Get the blinders off and realize that the country felt the same way about slavery. There was no large majority that thought slavery was wrong and who were willing to die for their convictions. You're like many people who can see so clearly events 140 years ago, but so blind to the same type of events today.
BUMP.
Thank you! A truly beautiful collection of Abraham Lincoln's own expression of heart and feeling. He was a true patriot to the Constitution. It is so sad that some here are so historically-challenged and fail STILL to confront the issues as fully and squarely as he was, self-admittedly, forced to do.
I am going to bookmark this and read it in its entirety but first I just want to say this about slavery. I have read some revisionist history aboput slavery saying that at least the slaves were fed and clothed ect ,.....well to that I say I would rather be free and poorly fed, hungry and cold than to be ensleved. As Americans we fought for our freedom with no less passion. If it was bad for us to be tethered to the king of england then it was equally bad for white southerenrs to keep a group of people in tethers of their own.
The people of Russia probably ate better and might have been warmer with communisim; were they better off? Some slave owners may have been more benign than others but it was a cancer. For sure, ther ewerre other issues in the Civil War but slavery was part of a way of living that the South felt their states had a right to make on their own. I don't agree. And I don't think that would be reflected in our founding documents.
Now with open mind and vented passions I will read the post. jonna, sorry about the typos.
While it is true that Federal power surged markedly as a direct result of Lincoln's actions, it is Wilson--a Democrat--who gets credit for the nightmarish gargantuan that exists in Washington today. The legislation passed in 1912-1913 gave us what we're stuck with now, baby.
I would be willing to defend every act Lincoln took after Ft. Sumter, including the suspension of habeus corpus. Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures. The onus for whatever may have been constitutionally dubious about those acts falls on the South---Davis, Lee, et al. In any case, it is without any doubt that Lincoln was far more accountable for his acts throughout the war than was Jefferson Davis for his own traducing of the Southern people in pursuit of one of the worst causes that any people ever fought for in entire history of the world.
I would be willing to defend every act Lincoln took after Ft. Sumter, including the suspension of habeus corpus. Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures.
Where have I heard that song before? Oh yes, "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."--Paul Begala talking about Clinton executive orders. Clinton too, held the people of America in contempt.
Where have I heard that song before? Oh yes, "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."--Paul Begala talking about Clinton executive orders. Clinton too, held the people of America in contempt.
I have noticed that calling those with whom they disagree "Clintonian" is a favored tactic of the cognitively challenged on FR; a last refuge of scoundrels, so to speak, similar to the criticism often made about those who wrap themselves in the flag in order to gain unmerited moral stature. Specious comparisons between Lincoln and Clinton, or Lincoln and Lenin, do nothing to help your position, however. They only make you look foolish, although, due to the aforementioned "challenge," I don't expect you to realize it.
You evade the central question:
Did the South have the
Constitutional RIGHT to withdraw from the Union?
If you say "No", you need to support that with more than your excitable prose and personal opinion.
If you say "Yes", then I don't see why South Carolina could not claim ownership of previous federal forts, and see federal presence in same as illegal.
Cheers.
You seem to have some irrational jihad against the South. Not to say you aren't creative and dedicated. But to characterize Wilson as a Dixiecrat is somewhat simplistic, just as it would be for later pol's to so characterize Clinton and Johnson, IMO. After all, he started out in politics as Governor of New Jersey.
You seem to prefer to raise minutia and back away when you encounter informed opposition. REmember our last discussion on civil war threads?
. Any real study of Lincoln is a study in just what can go wrong in this country when a self serving megalomaniac is in the White House.
And any study of the Civil War is a study on what happens when one of God's countries is broken up over a cause that is not just.
That Lincoln suspended habeus corpus is not a dixiecrat myth. That he imprisoned thousands of people who disagreed with him is not a myth. That he had people deported is also not a Dixiecrat myth. Neither is the fact that he shut down newspapers who did not print what he wanted.He raped the Constitution...
And the fact that slavers raped and murdered slaves is not a myth. Sucks when it happens back to you, doesn't it?
Lincoln never stood for the social or political equality of the Negro.
In his speech at Charleston, Illinois in 1858, he said:
I am not now, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way
the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not
now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes,
nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white
people. There is a physical difference between the white and black races
which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or
political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior,
and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.
That last part especially doesn't sound like LIncoln. I think it has been edited, although you might not be aware of it. I don't think Lincoln would say there Must be a position of superior and inferior. The excerpt I have of this speech goes:
"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." [Great applause.]
See how the addition of the highlighted text changes the whole meaning? Too, confederate apologists sieze on this one piece of text from 1858, and ignore everything subsequent.
Lincoln clearly came out in support of voting rights for blacks in April, 1865. At the second inaugural ball he told Frederick Douglass, "There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours."
The record won't support the spin you would give it.
Walt
It's getting late, but this historian is right on target. Certainly of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, it has been said that where he had the {unconstitutional} power to act, he freed no slaves -- meaning the 4 border states with slaves. Where he had no {effective} power to act, he freed all the slaves -- meaning none in practicality.
Actually, it was easier for him free slaves in the South than the border states or the North in the same way our presidents can stop Iraq from flying military aircraft but probably can not stop state national guards from doing it.
WRONG! PERIOD. It was about MONEY!
Darned right it was about money, all the money the slave owners were making off their slaves
Whiskey Papa has never posted except as an apologist for the despotic actions of Lincoln.
Do you believe the actions of slave owners were despotic?
NOT true-the real facts about lincoln the racist, anti-roman catholic, anti-semite, etc. continue to come out despite damnyankee lies, evasions and puffery!
Do you believe slave owners were racist?
A modern day example would be states that did not practice abortion invading states that did practice abortion in order to stamp out abortions all while the supreme law of the land allowed abortions.
Refute that argument if you can.
Maybe their cause would be just.
Abraham Lincoln, arguably the greatest president in history, urged "malice toward none."
How sad that so many harbor malice toward him.
lincoln's place in history is NOT secure, unless you mean that liars routinely LIE!
The slaver place in history is certainly secure. Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors, elitists.
walt, why do you waste bandwidth, posting long, boring, needless drivel. can't you come up with your OWN arguments?
Your short posts waste more bandwidth than his long ones do, at least he proves his points.
Oh most definitely Lincoln and Lenin? I agree!! Now Lincoln and Marx that's a different story. They were both D*MNED Socialists, fact of the matter
And what's your opinion of the slave owners?
It would be a great country only on the condition that they keep poeple that are living as if it was still the 1860's in padded cells.
Oh most definitely Lincoln and Lenin? I agree!! Now Lincoln and Marx that's a different story. They were both D*MNED Socialists, fact of the matter
The big day will come when those without eyes to see and ears to hear, false accusers, and liars will be in their proper place.
The New York draft riots were probably the most notorious of these backlashes.
That's just New York. They've been screwed up since the British concentrated the Royalists there during the Revolutionary war.
but he might well have been "sold a bill of goods" that the "saving of the Union" was worth DYING for!
Were the slave owners worth dying for?
lincoln and klintoon are essentially twins, marooned 140 years apart.
And you're marooned 140 years from reality.
Couldn't agree more. Do you know who made the wise quote?
The involuntary servitude of 3-4 million people would hardly cause the North to invade the South no more than the blood of 35-40 million unborn has caused a civil war today.
You're argument has a fatal flaw. There are not abortion states and anti-abortion states. If there was, we could very well have another secession and civil war.
There was no large majority that thought slavery was wrong and who were willing to die for their convictions.
There never is. Usually, massive social change is brought about by a small but determined minority.
You're argument has a fatal flaw. There are not abortion states and anti-abortion states. If there was, we could very well have another secession and civil war.
So your argument is that we could have avoided the WBTS if we'd just passed a law making slavery not only legal in every state, but couching it in terms of a right to choose?
Did the South have the Constitutional RIGHT to withdraw from the Union?
Once they seceded, they were a neighboring foreign country with an immoral practice to gain the economic advantage. They were an economic enemy of the United States and had to be invaded. Lincoln's foremost reason was to preserve the union, but this was important also.
So your argument is that we could have avoided the WBTS if we'd just passed a law making slavery not only legal in every state, but couching it in terms of a right to choose?
Huh?
If those 5% of slave owners would've ramped down the Southern economy from slavery like General Lee did personally, there wouldn't have been a WBTS. I guess they were too greedy.
Oops on post 128. This should've been your italics:
The day will come when Lincoln is re-evaluated completely: history will place him next to LBJ, Clinton, Wilson and some others, although the damage he has done is far deadlier than the damage done by all bad presidents combined.
(font check)
They only make you look foolish, although, due to the aforementioned "challenge," I don't expect you to realize it.
A favorite tactic among the quasi-intelligent is to start personal attacks, rather than reinforcing their arguments. Afterwards of course, they deny that the attack was "personal".
Personal attacks rather than cognitive responses make you look foolish, although, due to what I percieve is a inflated ego coupled with a lack of civility, I don't expect you to realize it.
Once they seceded, they were a neighboring foreign country with an immoral practice to gain the economic advantage.
If the South was a neighboring foreign country, then the North invaded a soveriegn country, with its own constitution and elected leaders. That's not a civil war, that is a war of aggression. And let's not forget that some of the generals leading the invading army were practicing the same immorality as they were purportedly trying to stamp out.
You have passion in your argument, but your argument consist merely of impassioned opinion, but no facts to back them up.
[You're argument has a fatal flaw. There are not abortion states and anti-abortion states. If there was, we could very well have another secession and civil war.]
So your argument is that we could have avoided the WBTS if we'd just passed a law making slavery not only legal in every state, but couching it in terms of a right to choose?
You are dead-on right.
That is exactly what DID happen.
Our under-educated friend seems not to know that prior to 1973 this was indeed the case.
Abortions were illegal in the US with the exception of New York and Hawaii.
The Supreme Court determined that something NOT in the Constitution REALLY was there (just hiding somewhere in a 'penumbra') and struck down all abortion laws.
Say what you will about morality, but slavery WAS legal and WAS in the Constitution.
It was the North that broke the law and, in the process, the Constitution.
If the South was a neighboring foreign country, then the North invaded a soveriegn country, with its own constitution and elected leaders. That's not a civil war, that is a war of aggression.
True. I've said before I haven't got a problem with Southern sympathizers calling the Civil War a War of Northern Agression. The North did what it had to do.
And let's not forget that some of the generals leading the invading army were practicing the same immorality as they were purportedly trying to stamp out.
Lincoln started out wanting to preserve the union. Later, when he saw the time was right, he fully embraced the abolition of slavery (going with the base of the Republican Party-the Radical Republicans). I'm sure the Northern generals weren't too hip on the slavery issue.
You have passion in your argument, but your argument consist merely of impassioned opinion, but no facts to back them up.
I think most of what I've posted can be historically backed up, but the rest is my opinion. On the economic issue, I think of what would happen today if there was an overthrow in Canada and a few rich elitists suddenly propped up some kind of serfdom along the U.S. - Canada border and they began building factories, using slave camps, and began using these slaves to build cars, electronics, everything, and began undercutting on price Detroit, Silicon Valley, etc. and our businesses began going out of business. I believe we would invade and go to war to stop them.
Say what you will about morality, but slavery WAS legal and WAS in the Constitution. It was the North that broke the law and, in the process, the Constitution.
If it's constitutional and legal to hold 4 million in bondage, then we have a definite problem with the Constitution and the law. Too bad the 5% of the Southern population that were involved with slavery wouldn't work with us to solve the problem, but instead goaded the good Southern population into sacrificing their lives for their greedy fat fingers in the Civil War.
Hate to disillusion anybody, but the confederacy amounted to a total betrayal of American ideals and everything which had brought about progress in America until that time, and amounted to an attempted sellout of the United States to the system of global exploitation then known as the British Empire. Jefferson Davis and every one of those turkeys involved in the East India company, the slave trade etc. etc. deserved to hang.
The American Almanac's Pages on these topics are instructive.
East India Company or West India Company? The West India Company didn't have a very long life.
my "intelligence network" tells me that this production is yet another apologist activity for the "lincolnlovers". too bad, if that's true.
So your argument is that we could have avoided the WBTS if we'd just passed a law making slavery not only legal in every state, but couching it in terms of a right to choose?
That was a touchy point, but the South had the option of accepting a valid offer to make slavery legal South of the Missouri Compromise line all the way through California, to right the protection of slavery into the Constitution, and to require Northern states to compensate the Southern States for lost servitors. The votes were there, but it fell short only by those that had left ie: the Southern Senators and represenatives who no longer attended.
The right to choose was touchy because the North had a habit with it's greater wealth and population of getting more folks into any territory that opened up, and then in more or less railroading that area into a free state. Nevertheless, the deal would have protected the institution of slavery as long as the South desired to keep it. The bottom line for the south was that the leaders of the Confederacy were more interested in breaking up the Union and gambling their investments on the purple dream which was Southern expansionism into the Caribbean and Central America. With slavery hard written into the Constitution, there was a good chance that Cuba, Santo Domingo and Mexico would all have ended up under the Stars and Stripes, and Southern militarism could have had a grand old time doing it, but it was not to be.
You seem to have some irrational jihad against the South. Not to say you aren't creative and dedicated. But to characterize Wilson as a Dixiecrat is somewhat simplistic, just as it would be for later pol's to so characterize Clinton and Johnson, IMO. After all, he started out in politics as Governor of New Jersey.
When the inheritors of the Dixiecrat conservatism moved from the Democratic Pary to the Republican, they quickly developed short memories. Just as when the Liberal Socialist left found a champion in Wilson, they immediately forgot his very deep and strong roots in the Confederacy. But Wilson's views of the Presidency were Davis' anti states rights views, and he even wrote about them. How you think becoming governor of New Jersey washed that out of him I can't see. His right hand man in his political assent was Colonel House of Texas. No man in the presidency had stronger ties to the real Confederates and the Confederacy than Woodrow Wilson, except perhaps James Buchanan, and he doesn't count because his actions predated the war. Wilson lectured the founders of the NAACP in the White House about the benefits to them of segregation. How on Earth you could separate a man who made blacks use the back door from the Dixiecrats just blows my mind. I keep thinking of Mrs Wilson leading all those Confederate Veterans and Ladies of the South in those parades honoring Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee, and then I have to wonder how it is you know so little of the South.
The Confederate Government was deeply split on the issue of states rights, and this political schizophrenia resides today in the republican party.
You seem to prefer to raise minutia and back away when you encounter informed opposition. REmember our last discussion on civil war threads?
If I remember correctly I called your bluff and you folded. You are still free to answer. Dragging on the pretense of avoiding that fact for dozens of posts may have helped you justify your position, but it cuts no ice with me. Some folks are not worth responding to because they have nothing new to say, and some folks go on forever with the same nonsense without really learning very much or bringing anything new to the table. A good strong show is, after all, just a show does not contribute anything of importance. When I find posters stuck in their own post holes, it's usually best to just leave them there and not reply to them. They don't really have enough understanding to navigate logically, so they move nowhere.
Which category you put yourself into is your business. If you take a look at what posters were putting up a year ago and find it's the same as what they put up today, they are in that hole. Some even delight in demonstrating that fact.
and you know what ASSUME means?
no more so than lincoln, grant, stanton, sherman, john brownand others of that sort.
and you are SURE of that?
walt proves nothing, because he seems incapable of scholarship, independent research OR thought. he simply posts long, often off-topic, boring, re-hashes of what some radical revisionist said AND/OR "out of context" passages. SORRY, that is worthless AND a waste of bandwidth.
get the message, #3.
the WBTS was about just ONE main thing: political freedom for the south. anything else is a self-serving lie, propounded by the northeastern academic elites to fool persons like you, who have not/will not take the time, effort and research techniques/skills, into thinking that the destruction of a small, poor, agricultrial nation (CSA) was WONDERFUL and that the slaughter of >2,000,000 civilians in the southland was OK too.
you are making yourself appear foolish, whith your snide and unfounded remarks.
BTW, where is YOUR earned doctorate in History from?
another SILLY post!
Some folks are not worth responding to because they have nothing new to say, and some folks go on forever with the same nonsense without really learning very much or bringing anything new to the table.
Pompous now aren't we?
"the north did what it had to do"????
did the "filth that came down from the north" HAVE to MURDER, RAPE, TORTURE, COMMITT ARMED ROBBERY & ARSON against 92 civilian women, children & men (too old/infirm to bear arms)from MY family, just because they happened to be easily victimized and because they were NOT white?
this all-too-common practice was OK????
can you say WARCRIMES, "punishable under international law" as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?
sure you can.
Hate to disillusion anybody, but the confederacy amounted to a total betrayal of American ideals and everything which had brought about progress in America until that time, and amounted to an attempted sellout of the United States to the system of global exploitation then known as the British Empire. Jefferson Davis and every one of those turkeys involved in the East India company, the slave trade etc. etc. deserved to hang.
If the sum total of your scholarship resides within the pages of the American Almanac, you have a long way to go in order to contribute to this subject, pro or con. Bruce Catton's series would be a good place to start, but only as a beginning.
I think of what would happen today if there was an overthrow in Canada and a few rich elitists suddenly propped up some kind of serfdom along the U.S. - Canada border and they began building factories, using slave camps, and began using these slaves to build cars, electronics, everything, and began undercutting on price Detroit, Silicon Valley, etc. and our businesses began going out of business. I believe we would invade and go to war to stop them.
You mean like when we went to war with China over their slave camps that make goods that undercut the domestic prices? Oh sorry my mistake...we gave them Most Favored Nation status instead of going to war with them, didn't we?
Pompous now aren't we?
Yes, you are. Thank you for admitting it.
Sometimes the truth hurts, and you sound like you're in a lot of pain there. You might try some sort of an R&R vacation in the Sudan, they say slavery is still legal there...
Your #136: ....an enemy nation that had to be invaded...
Thus, Lincoln then led an "offensive" war agianst an autonomous Republic that had no territorial designs on him.
Lincoln, Commander-In-Chief of an invading army against an "economic" enemy.
Yep, sounds right.
Thanks for the tip, I will be sure to watch it.
Whisky Papa's ability to cut and paste history to prove his pre-determined conclusion has always impressed me. This, however, is not a scholastic methodoligy for the study of history. To say that the second war for Independance was fought over slavery, is as simplistic as to imply that the first war for Independance was fought over tea. Perhaps Whisky Papa's Yankee ancestors had a better grasp on reality when they wrote, "Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion...slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the Rebellion rely to "fire the Southern heart", and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity over clamour about the tariff, selected slavery as a better subject for agitation." (North American Review, Boston, 1862). Perhaps Lincoln himself brought the issue into focus when he asked, "What shall become of my tariff?" (Dabney, in Secular, 1897). Simple minds seek simple solutions. For a free South. L. A. Salley
Whisky Papa's ability to cut and paste history to prove his pre-determined conclusion has always impressed me. This, however, is not a scholastic methodoligy for the study of history. To say that the second war for Independance was fought over slavery, is as simplistic as to imply that the first war for Independance was fought over tea. Perhaps Whisky Papa's Yankee ancestors had a better grasp on reality when they wrote, "Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion...slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the Rebellion rely to "fire the Southern heart", and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity over clamour about the tariff, selected slavery as a better subject for agitation." (North American Review, Boston, 1862). Perhaps Lincoln himself brought the issue into focus when he asked, "What shall become of my tariff?" (Dabney, in Secular, 1897). Simple minds seek simple solutions. For a free South. L. A. Salley
Happiness will never be ours until a party is put in power that will see that the Constitution of our forefathers is protected as a sacred instrument, and the decisions of the Supreme Court are considered the highest law of the land.
If this is just a careless sentence, so be it. But the rest of the essay does not seem to consist of careless sentences, so I will take it seriously.
Neither the Supreme Court nor any other Court makes laws, the "highest" or any other variety. The people make laws through their elected representatives. If the author of this piece wants me to respect a Constitution which sets nine unelected jackasses up over this country as a committee of dictators with absolute power, he or she can kindly go straight to Hades. I see nothing like that in the Constitution I read.
You may hate Abraham Lincoln if you wish, but you will never convince me that Abraham Lincoln worked half as much evil against this country as has been worked by black-robed devils like Warren, Burger, Blackmun, Brennan, and [Thurgood] Marshall.
His argument is a close hypothetical. Like with Slavery, Abortion is allowed throught the US however, If Laws were slightly different, Certain states could outlaw it and others could promote it.
You may hate Abraham Lincoln if you wish, but you will never convince me that Abraham Lincoln worked half as much evil against this country as has been worked by black-robed devils like Warren, Burger, Blackmun, Brennan, and [Thurgood] Marshall.
I don't hate Lincoln, he's dead. I don't appreciate what he did to our country. He was one of many presidents who made the executive brach a dictatorship. And yes I agree that the USSC is more than complicit in usurping our freedom. Check out the article I posted on Marbury v. Madison. Regards.
Judging by fruits, those men helped end slavery.
Terrorists: Whippings
murderers: Surely
rapists: Obviously
oppressors: The definition of slavery.
elitists: The height of elitism, the belief that one can own another person.
see above
radical revisionist
When you see evidence you can't refute, you just say revisionism with no evidence.
the WBTS was about just ONE main thing: political freedom for the south.
So the slave owners could continue to collect their mammon.
anything else is a self-serving lie
There you go again, calling something a lie with no proof
like you who have not/will not take the time, effort and research techniques/skills, into thinking that the destruction of a small, poor, agricultrial nation (CSA) was WONDERFUL and that the slaughter of >2,000,000 civilians in the southland was OK too.
This whole nation paid a heavy price for slavery.
BTW, where is YOUR earned doctorate in History from?
This is a conservative forum, it's not required for the posters to have a doctorate in whatever subject the poster wishes to comment on. Besides, when I wen't to college, most of the instructors said basically "liberalism good, conservatism bad", so I don't really have much faith in those with degrees.
You were using 1860's language.
did the "filth that came down from the north" HAVE to MURDER, RAPE, TORTURE, COMMITT ARMED ROBBERY & ARSON against 92 civilian women, children & men (too old/infirm to bear arms)from MY family, just because they happened to be easily victimized and because they were NOT white?
War is hell. In almost any war, bands of soldiers here and there under questionable leadership are going to commit chaotic crimes. There is a certain percentage of people that are psychopathic in the population and they're distributed everywhere and will act out on their fantasies when given the chance and the chaos of war is a perfect chance. This went on on both sides in the Civil War and probably every war where the combatants end up in small to medium size groups.
can you say WARCRIMES, "punishable under international law" as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?
Did the international court exist in the 1860's?
Lincoln was far-seeing, compassionate, forgiving and one of the two greatest leaders this nation was fortunate to have (Washington the first).
According to a recent national poll, the "American people" have ranked George Washington well below Bill Clinton (ranked #5) on the scale of presidential greatness.
You mean like when we went to war with China over their slave camps that make goods that undercut the domestic prices? Oh sorry my mistake...we gave them Most Favored Nation status instead of going to war with them, didn't we?
You missed a big portion of my point, I said "along our border".
I've said his main reason was to preserve the union.
His argument is a close hypothetical. Like with Slavery, Abortion is allowed throught the US however, If Laws were slightly different, Certain states could outlaw it and others could promote it.
Yes, and I said if the states that agreed were grouped together, there could be secession and civil war and it would be over abortion. How is his argument supposed to make me think the Civil War wasn't over slavery?
The South is so darned lucky it lost the Civil War. Otherwise it would be 97% black today, very much like South Africa. The North saved you, you bastards. You lost the war but won the future.
Wow....you're still here posting on FreeRepublic, eh? Suprising, considering the number of your profanity filled posts Jim Robinson has deleted from various threads. He must have a soft spot for you.
Slave owners should have been dragged out into the streets, castrated and then shot. The arrogance of someone believing they can own another human...
So you are saying that Washington and Jefferson should have been dragged out into the street to be castrated and shot? Do you actually consider yourself to be an American?
• And any study of the Civil War is a study on what happens when one of God's countries is broken up over a cause that is not just.
• And the fact that slavers raped and murdered slaves is not a myth. Sucks when it happens back to you, doesn't it?
• Actually, it was easier for him free slaves in the South than the border states or the North in the same way our presidents can stop Iraq from flying military aircraft but probably can not stop state national guards from doing it.
• Darned right it was about money, all the money the slave owners were making off their slaves
• The slaver place in history is certainly secure. Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors, elitists.
• Your short posts waste more bandwidth than his long ones do, at least he proves his points.
• And what's your opinion of the slave owners?
• It would be a great country only on the condition that they keep poeple that are living as if it was still the 1860's in padded cells.
• The big day will come when those without eyes to see and ears to hear, false accusers, and liars will be in their proper place.
• That's just New York. They've been screwed up since the British concentrated the Royalists there during the Revolutionary war.
• Once they seceded, they were a neighboring foreign country with an immoral practice to gain the economic advantage. They were an economic enemy of the United States and had to be invaded. Lincoln's foremost reason was to preserve the union, but this was important also.
• I think most of what I've posted can be historically backed up, but the rest is my opinion. On the economic issue, I think of what would happen today if there was an overthrow in Canada and a few rich elitists suddenly propped up some kind of serfdom along the U.S. - Canada border and they began building factories, using slave camps, and began using these slaves to build cars, electronics, everything, and began undercutting on price Detroit, Silicon Valley, etc. and our businesses began going out of business. I believe we would invade and go to war to stop them.
• This is a conservative forum, it's not required for the posters to have a doctorate in whatever subject the poster wishes to comment on. Besides, when I wen't to college, most of the instructors said basically "liberalism good, conservatism bad", so I don't really have much faith in those with degrees.
Amazing.
You went to a lot of work for that! Thank you! My greatest hits on one album!
...Suprising...
Should be "surprising" since we're in the mood to point out little errors.
"war is hell".
gee, there's an old cliche.are you saying that because some psycopaths have always existed in history, that it was acceptable for the damnyankee army to make a POLICY of RAPE, TORTURE,ARSON,ROBBERY & MURDER of civilians a part of their war strategy? that is precisely what the bluebelly army did throughout the war. there is, extant,a memorandum for record at the National Archives from the Provost Marshal of the Army, which states that "outrages against public decency & morals" when committed against civilian persons "in those states in rebellion" are NOT to be reported, investigated and/or prosecuted by tribunals, courts martial or civilian courts of jurisdiction.
when i asked to see & copy that memorandum in 1998, the archivist said that "circulation of such documents might be mis-understood" and refused to let me copy it.
this memo amounts to a "get out of jail free card" for the "filth that came doewn from the north".
for dixie, sw
Should be "surprising" since we're in the mood to point out little errors.
My intention wasn't intended to point out your numerous grammatical errors and poor sentence structure, but rather to state my amazement at what is being taught in our institutions of higher learning. Leaving highschool at the age of 17 to enlist in the armed forces of our country, I never took the opportunity to see first-hand the type of drivel which passes for an "education" these days.
My intention wasn't to point out your.....
(The preview box is there for a reason, Godebert)
Here is the real Lincoln
www.lewrockwell.com/orig/mercer1.html
www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman16.html
www.lewrockwell.com/decoster/decoster21.html
www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=607$FS=Lincoln%27s+Economic+Legacy
You know, it is insulting to read the drivel at the websites you listed and be told "Here is the real Lincoln." I have been reading books on the Civil War and Lincoln since I was a small boy. I KNOW WHO LINCOLN WAS. The smallminded crybabies who, 150 years later, still bemoan the loss of slave labor are not worth one second of my time.
The degree to which imbeciles at this website defend slavery is directly proportional to the respect Free Republic will receive from thoughtful and serious Americans. If it ever turns out that a critical mass is reached and the Free Republic becomes a gathering place for slavery apologists, the website will quickly become totally inconsequential.
"I have been reading books on the Civil War and Lincoln since I was a small boy"
It must be terribly difficult for you to learn anything new or different since you know it all already. I'll bet that if not now, in years to come you will tell us what a great president Clinton was. Sounds like you have bought into the historical revisionist worship (probably ever sense you were a small boy). No one I have read has defended slavery, they just don't defend the unconstitutional behavior of Lincoln and the hero worship drivel projected as history.
It amazes me you can't admit atrocities were commited on both sides. You're either excessively partisan (to a cause that hasn't existed for 140 years, no less) or out of touch with reality.
My intention wasn't intended to point out your numerous grammatical errors and poor sentence structure, but rather to state my amazement at what is being taught in our institutions of higher learning.
I took engineering in college, not Civil War history. You're right about academia, though, most of what they teach that isn't scientific, mathematical, or physical law is drivel. Care to refute any point I've made?
...highschool...
High school is two words, by the way. :^)
Ho hum.
I have heard how "great" Lincoln was until I am convinced that had Adolf Hitler succeeded, we would be revering his name today--in GERMAN
My ancestors were living in Charles County, Maryland when the six people in the county who voted for lincoln were asked (none too politely) to leave.
The only overwhwelming majority for Lincoln was north of the Mason Dixon line where an industrialized northern states wished to even more thoroughly exploit the southern states through unfair tarrifs.
Slavery only became an issue as an economic sanction, and to free a mass of cheap labor for the growing industries of the north.
The transition has been made--from being provided full employment, food, shelter, clothing, and rudimentary medical care to attempting to provide these out of low wages--or welfare, the modern equivalent of slavery--to the state.
Pray tell, if slavery was such an issue, why the great Lincoln didn't "free" the slaves until 1863. The war had been going nearly three years by then. If this was the issue, then the Emancipation proclamation should have been the event that precipitated the war, not a late afterthought.
EVEN the BLACK ones??????
Remember, too, that the Lincoln family owned a few slaves.
Slavery contributed very heavily to the tension between the North and South
Not only did it clearly demarcate which state was which and cause the free state/slave state battle in the senate, it also created the economic conditions which led to the war.
Yes, I said slavery created the economic conditions which apologists try to blame for the war instead of slavery.
Without slavery, the South would have been more industrialized, and there would be less industrial/agrarian conflict.
In Maryland, the State Legislature was placed under "house arrest" and interned in Fort McHenry. In Baltimore people rioted when the state was INVADED by the Massachusetts Militia while collaboration between Lincoln and the Governor of Maryland kept the Maryland Militia from being called up until it was too late--their arms and armories had been siezed. Lincoln's orders effectively held the entire state as hostage, and as a result, hordes of Marylanders fought for the South.
Yes, some blacks owned slaves. Even PBS put on a documentary which showed this.
Yes, the time was right. Lincoln recognized the need for more cannon fodder to throw against the southern armies. New immigrants, who could barely speak English, had been conscripted, negroes in servitude could be released and told they were fighting to free negroes everywhere......
Judging by fruits...
Let's judge a little fruit, shall we?
Anyone who believes that the Union Army fought a "Civil War" to protect the civil rights of non-whites needs to explain why the Union Army took the most basic right, the right to life, away from so many Native Americans around the same time frame.
The answer is simple, but would like to hear yours first. Thanks in advance.
Care to refute any point I've made?
It's hard to "refute" an opinion. Your statement that Americans from our past who owned slaves were: "Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors, elitists" is interesting. It must be very hard for you to carry pictures of all those bad, evil men around in your wallet (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Grant). How can you live with yourself?
Yes, the time was right. Lincoln recognized the need for more cannon fodder to throw against the southern armies. New immigrants, who could barely speak English, had been conscripted, negroes in servitude could be released and told they were fighting to free negroes everywhere......
Oh, so that's it. Let the immigrants come in so we can start a civil war and watch them all get shot. sheesh.
Anyone who believes that the Union Army fought a "Civil War" to protect the civil rights of non-whites needs to explain why the Union Army took the most basic right, the right to life, away from so many Native Americans around the same time frame.
Lincoln invaded to preserve the union. Later he fully embraced the Radical Republican's position of the abolition of slavery. I'm sure the Union Army wasn't too hip on this. Military people are military people. They're trained for war.
It must be very hard for you to carry pictures of all those bad, evil men around in your wallet (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Grant).
That's intellectually dishonest. You know that the institution of slavery made it possible for the less scrupulous among us to take advantage of the situation and run roughshod over their slaves to fulfill their wicked desires. I don't believe our money Presidents took part in this.
With all due respect, your answer doesn't answer my question.
That's intellectually dishonest. You know that the institution of slavery made it possible for the less scrupulous among us to take advantage of the situation and run roughshod over their slaves to fulfill their wicked desires. I don't believe our money Presidents took part in this.
So you are saying that only some slave owners were "Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors and elitists"? Sorry, I must have missed that part from your earlier rants. Do you have a link to the list of who was naughty and who was nice?
What do you want? For me to say it was wrong for the U.S. army to kill Indians? Fine. It was wrong for the U.S. army to kill so many Indians if the circumstances of the situation that I've heard about are true and they probably are. Bad fruits here, good fruits during the Civil War.
So you are saying that only some slave owners were "Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors and elitists"? Sorry, I must have missed that part from your earlier rants. Do you have a link to the list of who was naughty and who was nice?
Yes, that's what I'm saying and I think anyone who reads these threads with any ounce of common sense and any ounce of honesty knew that. Must I guide you through every point?
What do you want?
This has nothing to do with what I want.
Bad fruits here, good fruits during the Civil War.
Off of the same tree? Benevolence and attempted genocide? Not likely.
Wanna try again?
Wanna try again?
I don't know, what's the prize?
I don't know, what's the prize?
LOL! A blue ribbon in fruit judging, of course. But you have to earn it.
Off of the same tree?
What about David? He saved the Israelites by taking out Goliath. Then years later when he had a crush on Uriah's wife, he sent Uriah's troop to storm the enemy's walls and called back all but Uriah. Uriah was killed. This is tantamount to murder. So was David a good tree or bad tree?
Checking for a sense of humor. :^)
"Yes, that's what I'm saying and I think anyone who reads these threads with any ounce of common sense and any ounce of honesty knew that."
Anyone reading your previous replies will see that you said no such thing.
Must I guide you through every point?
No....but it might help to say what you mean, rather to make sweeping condemnations in your haste to villify anyone who ever owned a slave as a Terrorist, murderer, rapist, oppressor and elitist".
So was David a good tree or bad tree?
Nice curve ball! Do you always answer a question with a question?
Personally I think comparing David's weakness for Bathsheba leading up to the death of Uriah the Hittite and late 1800's Federal Government war policy makes for a bad analogy. Surely David had different goals in mind for the killing of Goliath and the seduction of Bathsheba. Not to mention the two events being separated by quite some time.
But to answer your question, ol' David's probably in good shape. Now back to the subject...
In Maryland, the State Legislature was placed under "house arrest" and interned in Fort McHenry. In Baltimore people rioted when the state was INVADED by the Massachusetts Militia while collaboration between Lincoln and the Governor of Maryland kept the Maryland Militia from being called up until it was too late--their arms and armories had been siezed. Lincoln's orders effectively held the entire state as hostage, and as a result, hordes of Marylanders fought for the South.
Secession was one issue, and fair minded people differed in their opinions. Armed insurrection is a different matter. Plotting to take control of Washington DC is another matter. Where in your book does the idea come from the part of the presidential oath requires a President to step back and let folks who want to take over the government by the force of arms do so? How dumb does a man have to be think think that's what the oath of office of President means when he takes it, and is that why you voted for W?
Maryland supplied 33,995 soldiers, 3,925 sailors and Marines, 8,718 colored troops to the war effort on behalf of the United States of America. 2,982 of these died on duty preserving the Constitution of the United States. Shame on you for deprecating their memory. Are you a commie or what?
The Lincoln bashers are a dying breed, even in the South. This is surely their final generation. I certainly hope you are wrong. Any real study of Lincoln is a study in just what can go wrong in this country when a self serving megalomaniac is in the White House. It almost happened again with Clinton. And I believe that more people are learning the truth about Lincoln, instead of dying out, as you incorrectly claim.
We are not dying, we are growing. I was brought up to believe that Lincoln was a good president, but after studying the devastation he wrougt, and the lasting impact of a growing national power in Washington, he moved to the bottom of the list of presidents, worse than clinton. I will agree with Jeff Davis, though, I dont think Lincoln would have torured the south thru reconstruction if he was not assassinated, but his use of overwelming national government power paved the way for it to be done by others. Reconstruction would never have been tolerated in this country before the Lincoln presidency, we had states rights back then.
Anyone reading your previous replies will see that you said no such thing.
I didn't think I had to spell everything out in such detail. I guess with some, I do. If I made the statement "The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.", would you claim that I said every single Japanese citizen got into a plane and bombed Pearl Harbor? This conversation is quickly degenerating into useless drivel because of intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, David was a good tree that did have a bad fruit on occasion. Maybe that's why we should judge by fruits and not just one fruit. My point was good entities sometimes make horrendous mistakes. Did these Indian massacres go on mostly while the country was whole or more during the Civil War. (A real question, I don't know)
Well, I'm not to sure about Lincoln, I'm not sure whether, during and in the aftermath of that war: "this government of the people, by the people, for the people", did not perish from the earth. I'm not sure whether that war was not a bloody orgy of idolatry to the religion of government as god. However, the first sentence of this post:
"When Pontius Pilate asked our Lord, "What is truth?" Christ did not answer, because He knew Pilate did not wish to know the truth."
is false, because, as you can see, the gospel states: "he went out" not "Christ did not answer" and what is implied is not that "Pilate did not wish to know the truth", but that Pilate did not believe in truth.
John 18:37 John 18 John 18:36-38 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
John 18:38 John 18 John 18:37-39 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.
Did these Indian massacres go on mostly while the country was whole or more during the Civil War. (A real question, I don't know)
To my understanding, some during, most after.
Maybe that's why we should judge by fruits and not just one fruit.
Yep...the scripture is plural, meaning that the result is what counts.
So, what are the results of the two conflicts in question here?
Consolidation of power and land grabbing. What Washington DC does best, and it continues to this day.
Consolidation of power and land grabbing. What Washington DC does best, and it continues to this day.
...and the end of slavery. Oh how quickly the plantation owner sympathizers forget.
At the same time; he knew there was but one solution to slavery, its abolition
I don't have the dates and names in front of me, but I would characterize that statement as a half-truth. While abolition might have been part of the goal, Lincoln was a staunch proponent of the deportation of slaves--and worse, freed slaves--to areas outside the US.
Oh how quickly the plantation owner sympathizers forget.
Well, I wouldn't know because I ain't one. Slavery is definitely not a good thing, that's why the Lord used it as a punishment instead of a reward, I reckon.
...and the end of slavery.
The end of one form of slavery I suppose. But now we are full circle to my original question, are we not?
Which, BTW, you still haven't really answered, but that's cool.
Look, if'n you want to think Lincoln is the "cherry on top" it's fine by me. Hopefully, I've given you some things to ponder, I know you gave me some. That's what this place, (FR), does best.
You take care.
Those thought to be spies were imprisoned and kept there because of it.
Good god, do you read what you write? Spies against whom? The Constitution makes no provision for treason within the Union. Egads!!!!!By this reasoning, Clinton could well have arrested those who, as he deemed, were spying against the Federal Government--people such as Linda Tripp. This is insanity.
There was never a provision in the Constitution for holding the states together by force; in fact, such a notion is antithetical to the Constitution. If this were proper, then why the great drive to get the final colonies to ratify the Constitution? Why not force them to accept it, since Union seems to be a matter of Divine Providence to some people on this thread?
"I didn't think I had to spell everything out in such detail. I guess with some, I do. If I made the statement "The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.", would you claim that I said every single Japanese citizen got into a plane and bombed Pearl Harbor?"
But that's not what you said. Here are your exact words:
"The slaver place in history is certainly secure. Terrorists, murderers, rapists, oppressors, elitists."
Insert the word "Japanese" for slaver, and you will see how your little analogy is flawed, or "intellectually dishonest" as you like to say.
"This conversation is quickly degenerating into useless drivel because of intellectual dishonesty."
There is nothing "intellectual" about your dishonesty.
I can't prove it of course. But I doubt my Yankee farmer great grandfather in Indiana would have volunteered to wear the blue uniform, as he did, over a taxation issue.
Really? Isn't that precisely what they did some 90 years before? Nevertheless, you produce the perfect argument why the war had to be couched in terms of "freedom" and "slavery"----they always are.......
But now we are full circle to my original question, are we not?
Is this the question of why the U.S. Army killed Indiains?
Lincoln moved off the position of relocating the freed slaves during the Civil War. Also, I tried to post last week but there was a tech glitch; I had been asked about proof that Lincoln steadfastly advocated slaveholder compensation until after the War was essentially won. Lincoln did this by proposing a bill in 1848 while a new congressman to abolish slavery for minors in the District of Columbia and compensate the slaveholders. He actually did this for all slaves in DC in 1862 and it was part of the Emancipation Proclamation wherein slaveholders in the border states would be compensated if their states voluntarily emancipated.
Slavery only became an issue as an economic sanction, and to free a mass of cheap labor for the growing industries of the north.
Is this really the kind of foolishness slavery apologists tell themselves? Which industries did they go into, exactly? I'm sure you have documentation of the huge migration of ex-slaves into the north directly after the war, as well as a list of companies that hired them. Please supply it.
Are you any relation to A+bert?
...and the end of slavery. The end of one form of slavery I suppose. But now we are full circle to my original question, are we not?
I am only allowed to keep half of my income, I cannot carry openly guns or weapons on the street, there are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations that I must now follow, I cannot raise and educate my children the way I want to-if I try, they will take them away from me, I cannot get a job without permission and only after getting accepted by a national job computer, I no longer am secure in my house and I am constantly under the threat of a no-knock armed forced entry into my home at all hours of the nite, I am searched whenever I travel-by plane or ship, my email is under constant survellance by computer, my telephone conversations are montitored by roving wiretaps, my financial transactions are reported and I cannot leave the country with enough cash to do what I want, and if I move to another country, my assets are subject to siezure, if I or any of my family members inadvertently break any laws, I could lose my house thru forfeture laws, I need a license to do anything, even own a dog- which I can no longer shoot if he is a bad dog, I must put 15% of my income into a retirement fund which I will lose entirely upon my death, etc, etc,
I'm so glad Lincoln ended slavery, Aint freedom great?????????!
Are you any relation to A+bert?
If you go back far enough, I'm related to everyone in this forum, including you. Scary thought....eh?
If it is that question, remember it was the same century as Napoleon. Western countries were routinely taking over land from other countries and Third World land from their natives. It wouldn't make sense to just leave 2 million square miles of good land to the Indians who weren't doing much with it and raise the probability of eventually a European power taking it. The U.S. didn't have to be so brutal in some cases, but maybe it seemed necessary to the security of the United States not to have one of those sloppy European Countries take it.
I've never been that interested in the Civil War but I've got to stand up for the home-boy (I live in central Illinois near Lincoln Log Cabin country). I started seeing a lot of idiotic Lincoln bashing. As unrehearsed in this field as I am, it is so easy to refute those who say the South wasn't fighting for slavery (the Declaration of Secession of South Carolina alone is pretty damning). Those who bash Lincoln are forgetting the situation of the 1800's. Our nation wasn't nearly as secure as now. The dissolvement of the union over slavery wouldn't stand with a lot of presidents.
I'm so glad Lincoln ended slavery, Aint freedom great?????????!
There are 5000 uninhabited island near the Philipines. If this country is so bad why don't you do us a favor and go find one.
True. LOL
There are 5000 uninhabited island near the Philipines. If this country is so bad why don't you do us a favor and go find one.
If people like you, that dislike freedom so much, would go to those islands yourself, the rest of us could be free. There are plenty of places on this earth that dont like freedom, why did you have to mess up the only place that had freedom? I will never understand those like you that revel in the elimination of freedom.
How am I eliminating freedom?
and it was part of the Emancipation Proclamation wherein slaveholders in the border states would be compensated if their states voluntarily emancipated.
The obvious problem with this is that Lincoln had no authority to free slaves in the several states. To offer to pay a fee to owners in states that voluntarily freed their slaves--and obviously the converse that not a dime would be received if they were "forced" to emancipate--is not an act of beneficence but rather tyranny. Proclamations are the stuff of Kings and Despots, not presidents. The President has no constitutional authority to make law in the states, not now, and not then.
"I, --------, do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,
If only Lincoln, a man of many proclamations, had himself believed in and so honored the document...would there have been a war between the northern states and the southern states? I believe that to be one of the most serious issues here.
Good god, do you read what you write? Spies against whom? The Constitution makes no provision for treason within the Union. Egads!!!!!By this reasoning, Clinton could well have arrested those who, as he deemed, were spying against the Federal Government--people such as Linda Tripp. This is insanity.
At least you admit that it was treason within the Union. Thanks, I rest my case.
There was never a provision in the Constitution for holding the states together by force; in fact, such a notion is antithetical to the Constitution. If this were proper, then why the great drive to get the final colonies to ratify the Constitution? Why not force them to accept it, since Union seems to be a matter of Divine Providence to some people on this thread?
You should get a copy of the Constitution since you do not know or, if you have a copy, it might be well to read it.
Consider the following:
Article I,Section 8, paragraph;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union , suppress insurrections and repel invasions.
Article I, Section 9, paragraph 2;
The priveledge of the writ of habeus corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in the case of rebellion or insurrection the public safety may require it.
Article 10, Section 10, paragraph 1;
No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation, grant letters of marque or reprisal, emit money, emit bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver coin a payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts or grant any title of nobility.
Article IV, Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the legislature is cannot be convened) against domestic violence.
Lincoln moved off the position of relocating the freed slaves during the Civil War. Also, I tried to post last week but there was a tech glitch; I had been asked about proof that Lincoln steadfastly advocated slaveholder compensation until after the War was essentially won. Lincoln did this by proposing a bill in 1848 while a new congressman to abolish slavery for minors in the District of Columbia and compensate the slaveholders. He actually did this for all slaves in DC in 1862 and it was part of the Emancipation Proclamation wherein slaveholders in the border states would be compensated if their states voluntarily emancipated.
Wishful thinking on your part. Dan Sickles was in Columbia when Lincoln was assassinated. He had been sent early in 1865 by Lincoln to negotiate treaties to allow the immigration of blacks to Columbia. Dan was still negotiating on Lincoln's behalf when he heard about the assassination in May, 1865. News traveled slowly then.
Lincolns last offer to buy the southern servitors was made not too long before the fall of Richmond.